Brennan - The Mansions of Thomistic Philosophy

The Mansions of Thomistic Philosophy

Robert Edward Brennan OP

Thomistic Institute Providence CollegeProvidence Rhode Island

1939

I

The offices of wisdom are many but all of them may be resolved intoa single function which Aristotle describes as a correct ordering of reality

Looking at the Stagiritersquos own philosophy we are impressed at once by thesymmetry of its total structure and the delicate balance of all its numerouselements which suggests so naturally the analogue of a living organism Thesefeatures however are merely indicia of the truth and beauty that lie withinFor the actual value of Aristotelian thought derives from its essential corre-spondence with reality It starts with the primary datum of an objective worldof order and it ends by following to their very last outposts the leads givenby our immediate experience of this objective world

Thomas Aquinas was the Stagiritersquos most brilliant expositor Indeed thegifts of the two men were so much alike that it is difficult to say who was thegreater Aristotle in discovering truth or Aquinas in expounding and develop-ing it To the latter was allotted the task of rehabilitating the ancient paganrsquoswisdom and of consecrating it to the service of a new Christian RevelationThis extremely important undertaking extended not only to the content ofAristotlersquos work but to its method and order of exposition as well The im-pulse which the Angelic Doctor thus gave to Greek speculation has lasted downthrough the ages and in our own day we can point to an abundant and fruit-ful scholarship to demonstrate that the principles of Aristotelico-Thomisticphilosophy are not without significance for contemporary thought

Unfortunately however the devotion which our modern schoolmen haveshown to the content of the philosophia perennis has not always been a guar-antee of their allegiance to the original Peripatetic method of dividing andexposing the philosophic sciences Even a casual survey of the texts in com-mon use today shows a startling diversity of approach to the various disciplinesof wisdom suggesting perhaps that there were no fixed rules for the gover-nance of so important a matter The fact is of course that both Aristotle and

1

2 The Mansions of Thomistic Philosophy

Aquinas have left us some very definite criteria for establishing the positionand sequence of the several parts of philosophy and it is this ground plan of aPeripateticrsquos education as Aquinas conceived it that we wish to discuss here

II

The principle of management for bringing the philosophic disciplines intoproper array is the abstractive process By this tool Aquinas shows how thehuman mind expands its knowledge of the different strata of reality and howit fixes the gradients of its ascent from physical observation to the highestconcepts of metaphysics Abstraction is of two sorts the kind that dissociatesthings that are naturally found together and the kind that enables us to ap-prehend simply and absolutely the nature or essence of things For examplewe can study the coloring of a fruit without reference to its other propertiesor we can concentrate on the notion of fruit itself without reference to theconcrete characters that make it this or that particular fruit In the first in-stance we have a sample of what the modern psychologist calls abstractionwhich in reality is nothing more than a form of attention bringing the ob-server into focus with a given fact at the same time that it shuts out otherimpressions Thus we examine the coloring of the fruit and disregard its shapesurface texture odor and so forth In the second instance we are dealing withwhat is called ideogenetic abstraction where a universal concept is derivedfrom the concrete experience of sense or where intellect grasps reality withoutthe phenomenal garb which clothes it It is by means of this second type ofabstraction that the mind of man is able to stratify reality1lowast

The degrees of knowledge depend upon the relative depth or penetrationof the abstractive act Now Aquinas always believes in beginning at thebottom of the ladder and so he starts with matter not only because it isthe lowliest kind of existence but also and more especially because it is thefirst thing of which we are sensorily conscious In fact the intuitions of senseare at the basis of all our ideational achievements But matter has differentconnotations for the abstractive process and it is important that we understandthem The initial distinction laid down by Aquinas is between sensible matterwhich is subject to qualitative determinations and intelligible matter whichis subject to quantity The qualities of an object lie on its perimeter so tospeak its quantity on the other hand is more deeply imbedded in the verysubstance of the thing The former therefore appeal directly to the sensesbut the latter is really known only to the intellect Furthermore each kind

1Summa Theol I q 85 a 1 reply to obj 1 Cf also the commentaries of Cajetan onthis article The distinction to which Aquinas here refers is discussed by modern schoolmenin terms of total and formal abstraction

lowast[Note Some of the text in the footnotes was garbled during digitization and may beincorrect]

The Mansions of Thomistic Philosophy 3

of matter just described may be regarded as something individual marked offby characteristic features from everything else or as something common to awhole group of individuals2

With these refinements in mind we are now able to grasp what Aquinasmeans when he says that in the first degree of knowledge intellect abstractsfrom individual sensible matter Here we tear off the identification marks thatdistinguish singular objects among themselves The degree of remotion elim-inates matter only insofar as it is the source of numerical multiplication andthe idea which emerges leaves physical nature still subject to the conditions ofmovement and change What intellect is seeking on this level is an understand-ing of the universe of sensible being which is the proper area of investigationfor both natural science and natural philosophy It is quite manifest that theobject of this level of abstraction can neither exist nor be thought of withoutmatter

In the second degree of knowledge intellect abstracts from sensible matteraltogether and also from individual intelligible matter At this point in itsexplorations it is dealing with the quantified aspect of things Matter is nowno longer viewed as a principle of motion and change but only as a foundationof dimensionality and extension Here we have advanced into the region ofmathematics where quantity with all its special determinations becomes thegoal of our searching effort Again observe that an object of this sort cannotexist without matter although it can be thought of without matter

The third degree of abstraction places us at the farthest remove from mat-ter and all that is left is the being of the thing under consideration Herewe are ushered into the illimitable domain of metaphysics whose object bothexists and can be thought of without matter Now our vision is of being quabeing and it makes no shred of difference where we discover it mdash in the heav-ens above or on the earth beneath mdash the vision is exalted beyond the confinesof space and time and isolated from all material context On such an empyreanplane even material realities are made to yield up their intelligible content ofsubstance act potency accident and all the other metaphysical elements oftheir being On a basis of these three steps in the abstractive process Aquinasestablishes his tripartite division of speculative wisdom3

III

We are introduced to philosophy through logic not because it is the easiestthing to learn but as Thomas says because it furnishes us with the needed

2Summa Theol foe cit reply to obj 23The classical treatment of the degrees of abstraction is given by Aquinas in his In Librum

Boetii de Trinitate Expositio quest 5 de divisione scientiae speculativae Also v Maritain3 Les Degres du Savoir Paris Desclee de Brouwer 1982 pp 78ndash82


instruments for philosophizing4 Here we should be very definite about ourorder since we are laying the groundwork of induction and establishing thevalue of real definitions against a nominalistic empiricism that would denythe truth of universal knowledge Aristotlersquos plan for the Organon should beour model the Categories which treat of simple apprehension Interpreta-tion which examines the judicial acts of composition and division and theAnalytics in which syllogistic modes of reasoning and particularly the demon-stration are studied With this excellent background at our command we areready to deal with the subtler material of the Topics and the Book of Elenchswhere the forms of dialectic syllogizing and the numerous patterns of fallaciousargumentation are resolved in great detail5

At this point it may not be out of place to remark on the common present-day habit of making dialectics synonymous with the whole field of logic Thepractice may be justified for certain systems in philosophy but there are nogrounds for it in the authentic tradition of Aristotle where the term is re-stricted to mean those forms of reasoning which proceed from opinion or prob-ability In this connection it may be well to recall that Aquinas always usesthe word ldquodialecticsrdquo in the strict Aristotelian sense to designate merely apart of logical knowledge He would disapprove we are sure of this modernidentification of formalities that should be kept separate

We enter the temple of wisdom through the gateway of natural philosophywhich as Aquinas indicates in his commentaries should open with a surveyof the general principles of Aristotlersquos Physics With this broad informationas a framework for interpretation we pass on to the more specialized analysesthat are found in the De Coelo et Mundo and the De Generatione et Cor-ruption thus completing the foundations of what we call today the science ofcosmology6 Through the Stagiritersquos De Anima and Parva Naturalia we areadmitted to the field of psychology where soul becomes the object of specu-lation mdash not an isolated or transcendent soul capable of separate existencebut a soul which is actually the form of living matter The point is critical

4In Lib Boet de Trin quest 6 art 1 ad sec quaest reply to obj 35Aquinas has left us commentaries on Aristotlersquos Interpretation and Posterior Analytics

The latter are particularly valuable in showing us how to set about the methodic pursuitof essential definitions Here we learn how the mind passes from confused knowledge (quidnominis) to distinct knowledge (quid rei) and how it reaches demonstrative certitude byanalysis of generic and specific properties Judging by these Thomistic criteria modernscience stands in need of a re-formulation of many of its definitions

6The terms ldquophysicsrdquo and the ldquophilosophy of naturerdquo are used synonymously by AquinasldquoCosmologyrdquo and ldquopsychologyrdquo which represent the two divisions of the ldquophilosophy of na-turerdquo are words of comparatively recent origin the former coming into use with Christianvon Wolff in the 18th century the latter appearing at the end of the 16th century Wolffwas also the first to popularize the term ldquoontologyrdquo which he made equivalent to ldquogeneralmetaphysicsrdquo It was not until the middle of the 19th century that the word ldquoepistemol-ogyrdquo was adopted into our present-day philosophic nomenclature with its variant formsldquocriteriologyrdquo ldquognoseologyrdquo ldquoErkenatnistheorierdquo ldquotheory of knowledgerdquo and so on


especially when we are discussing human psychology where so many importantissues are confused by a failure to appreciate the essentially anthropologicalapproach of Aristotle and Aquinas7

According to our plan of abstraction mathematics should follow psychol-ogy But in the order of learning Thomas places it ahead of natural philosophyon the grounds that it can be acquired without experience For this reason itis customary to teach children the elements of mathematical knowledge beforethey study anything about science8 Its easy omission from the classical textsbrings out the further interesting fact that the three degrees of abstraction donot actually form one sequence Thus natural philosophy and metaphysics areboth concerned with entities that are real mathematics on the other handdeals with fictions of the imagination just as freely as it treats of real objects9

The inference is that a direct transit from the first to the third levels of ab-straction is lawful to the extent that it does not violate any principle of mentalcontinuity If and when an autonomous philosophy of mathematics is writtenit can assume its proper position in the categories of Thomistic thought Nowits basic concepts such as those of unity number quantity space and exten-sion are dispersed throughout other sections of our philosophic manuals

In the ordered development of speculative wisdom therefore it is quitepermissible for us to proceed at once from the philosophy of nature to meta-physics Towards the end of our psychological studies we analyze the functionsof intelligence whose adequate object is being Accordingly our first problemin metaphysics should deal with a critique of reason Is being really knowableand what is the value of the first principles of knowledge Our answer tothese questions is a defense of the power of mind to grasp reality Here wefollow the criteria that were proposed by Aristotle in the fourth book of hisMetaphysics and explained at greater length by Aquinas in his commentariesThis material with all its complex additions since the time of Thomas formsthe basis of our modern science of epistemology Once the knowable characterof being is established we are in a position to penetrate the meaning of beingitself and its attributes in the manner of the sixth and subsequent books ofthe Stagiritersquos Metaphysics This is the field of ontology from which in rapidstrides reason is now able to lift itself up to the contemplation of SupremeBeing In the twelfth book of his Metaphysics Aristotle comes to the end ofhis long and magnificent flight of intellect which now reaches to the being of

7Properly speaking the discussion of ldquosoulrdquo as a subsistent entity or separated substancefalls within the area of metaphysics It may be pointed out here that Aquinas made a distinctimprovement upon the psychology of Aristotle when he shifted his analysis from soul to manbesouled Cf the ldquoTract on Manrdquo in the Summa Theologica

8In Lib Boet de Trin quest 5 art 1 reply to obj 5 Also his commentary InLib Ethic ad Nichom book 6 lect 7

9Cf John of St Thomas Cursus Theol part 1 quest 6 disp VI art 2 no 20 In thecommentary on the Ethics of Aristotle to which we just referred (8) Aquinas says ldquoThelaws of mathematics are laws of imaginable entitiesrdquo


the very Godhead ldquoFor the actuality of thought is liferdquo he says ldquoand God isthis actuality Indeed God is actuality by His Essence and His Life is mostgood and eternalrdquo10

The Aristotelian concept of the Deity has been richly clarified by Aquinasboth in his exegesis of the Metaphysics and in numerous other sections ofhis philosophic treatises These are the things that we investigate in naturaltheology and when this stage of the journey is done we have finished with ourspeculative labors The perfection of human wisdom is reached however whenknowledge is diffused into the sphere of practice and when the principles of artand prudence are made incorporate in our works and actions We completeour philosophic training therefore with our studies of esthetics and ethics11

Let us present again in schematic form the order in which philosophydisposes all things in proportion and is itself disposed

1 Logic2 Cosmology Mobilia Physica3 Psychology4 Epistemology5 Ontology Immobilia Metaphysica6 Natural Theology7 Esthetics Factibilia Mechanica8 Ethics Agibilia Moralia

IV

There is abundant evidence to show that this is the true Peripatetic orderof exposition for the philosophic sciences Thus in the opening pages of hisPhysics Aristotle lays it down as a general rule that human knowledge shouldadvance from the less complex to the more complex Aquinas expresses thesame idea in other terms when he says ldquoThe natural method and order oflearning is to start with the known and proceed to the unknownrdquo Now thething with which we are most familiar from birth is the material universewith all its kaleidoscopic changes in color sound and tangible properties itswealth of physical elements and the constant interplay of its living and non-living energies These are the sorts of entities that supply us with food forspeculation in the philosophy of nature But this is only the beginning ofwisdom Our ultimate aim is to progress ldquofrom what is better known to us to

10[Metaphysics Book XII 1072b] καὶ ζωὴ δέ γε ὑπάρχει ἡ γὰρ νοῦ ἐνέργεια ζωή ἐκεῖνος

δὲ ἡ ἐνέργεια ἐνέργεια δὲ ἡ καθrsquo αὑτὴν ἐκείνου ζωὴ ἀρίστη καὶ ἀΐδιος φαμὲν δὴ τὸν θεὸν

εἶναι ζῷον ἀΐδιον ἄριστον ὥστε ζωὴ καὶ αἰὼν συνεχὴς καὶ ἀΐδιος ὑπάρχει τῷ θεῷ τοῦτο γὰρ

ὁ θεός11Esthetics is first in the order of invention but ethics is first in the order of excellence

The relation here is analogous to that which obtains between the philosophy of nature andmetaphysics since in both the speculative and the practical dimensions that which is priorin the order of dignity is basically regulative of that which is prior in the order of learning


what is better known in itselfrdquo For being is knowable to the degree that it is inact that is to the degree of its remotion from matter Rather unfortunately forus our intellects at first are in a state of potency in reference to all knowledgeand the principle of human cognition is the world of sensible being whichbecause of its material nature is only potentially understandable It is at thislevel that our quest of supreme reality begins The ascent to the lofty reaches ofmetaphysics whose object is completely devoid of matter is difficult under anycircumstances but it would be impossible obviously without the illuminationsand insights that we receive in our analyses of the physical universe12

Again in his exposition of the Book of Boethius on the Trinity Aquinastells us that the term ldquometaphysicsrdquo itself gives the proper clue to the positionof this discipline in the order of learning since it indicates a progressive devel-opment from sensible to suprasensible objects of cognition The same drift ofthought is expressed in a passage from Avicenna which Aquinas here incorpo-rates into his own text ldquoIn the order of learningrdquo says Avicenna ldquometaphysicscomes after physics (that is after the philosophy of nature) which treats ofmatters that are of great importance to first philosophy such as the notions ofgeneration corruption and so forth Likewise it is placed after mathematicsbecause to grasp the meaning of separated substances one must have someprevious knowledge of the number and arrangement of the heavenly bodiesrdquo13

In his exegesis of the sixth book of the Nicomachean Ethics the Angelic Doctorgives a fuller sketch of his plan for exposing the speculative sciences proposingthe following order (i) logic because it teaches the mode of all philosophy(ii) mathematics because it does not demand any special experience and isnot above the reaches of the imaginal power (iii) physics which though nottranscendent of sense and imagination yet requires a basis of experience (iv) metaphysics which altogether surpasses the imaginal power and calls fora strong intelligence14

Again in the Contra Gentiles Aquinas draws up a comparison between themethod of the philosopher who advances in wisdom from sensible to intelligiblereality and that of the theologian whose point of departure is the God of Rev-elation15 The comparison becomes more fruitful if we lay certain texts fromAristotle for example the De Coelo et Mundo alongside those portions of theSumma Theologica where Aquinas treats the same cosmological problems16

Should the psychologist be interested in making these comparative analyseswe have the Stagiritersquos De Anima and Parva Naturalia whose content may beparalleled by the theological Tract on Man17 The point is that in our discus-sion of philosophic matters Aquinas would have us follow the natural stages

12Cf the commentary of Aquinas on Aristotlersquos Physics book 1 lect 113In Lib Boet de Trin quest 5 art 114In Lib Ethic ad Nichom book 6 lect 715Book 1 chap 316Part I beginning with quest 4417Summa Theol Part I beginning with quest 75


of mental development which means progression from sensory data and themanifest changes of mobile being to the more remote and intangible realitiesof metaphysical existence

Further Aristotlersquos picture of man as a substantial composite of mind andmatter clearly indicates that the sensory mechanisms are necessary instru-ments not obstacles to the life of intellect As Aquinas profoundly observesthe soul of man in order of nature occupies the lowest rung on the ladderof intellectual substances inasmuch as it is forced to construct its knowledge-edifice from the concrete data of sense18 Now there is always a naturaladequacy between any given power and its object whence it is concluded thatthe proper object and first principle of human intellection is neither God northe soul nor any other immaterial entity but the essence of sensible being19

Such an essence like the intellectual form which grasps it is immersed in theshadows of matter and towards it the human mind gravitates by the samekind of congenital impulse that makes the eye respond to the lights and colorsof the universe True this initial urge of intellect results only in a confusedand indistinct sort of knowledge nevertheless the cognitive product connotesan actual perfection as Cajetan remarks to the extent that it enriches ourconsciousness with the notion of being20 It follows from our argument thatphilosophy should begin with the study of sensible entities and again we allegethe example of Aristotle who places physical analysis before metaphysical syn-thesis and leads his pupils to wisdomrsquos inner sanctum through the limina ofnatural philosophy The supreme advantage of such a method is that it beginswith the tangibilities of sense probing by easy stages into the meanings ofcorporeal movement and preparing the mind remotely at least to understandthe highest of all the Aristotelian antitheses the distinction of potency andact

We said a moment ago that neither God nor the soul is the first principleof human intellection If the former alternative were true then the processesof human knowledge would be purely synthetic in character As a matterof fact this is the position assumed by Parmenides and to a certain extentby Plato among the old Greek thinkers and this is what the more modernSpinoza undertook to show in his metaphysical construction of reality Butthe end like the beginning of the Spinozan doctrine was an aprioristic Deitywhich was primarily known as substance mdash indeed the only substance Fromthis primitive intuition all the divine attributes were deduced as well as all thecosmological entities that succeeded one another from eternity Thus ontologybecame ontologism and natural theology became pantheism when being in

18Summa Theol I q 76 a 519The first principle of human intellection is not God (Summa Theol I q 88 a 3) nor

the soul (Summa Theol I q 87 an 1 2 3 4) nor any other immaterial substance (SummaTheol I q 88 a 1) but the essence of sensible being (Summa Theol I q 84 a 7 q 85a 8 q 87 a 2 reply to obj 2 q 88 a 3)

20Comm super Tract de Ente et Essentia Thomae de Aquino proemium


general was identified with Infinite Being and good in general with InfiniteGood

On the other hand if the soul were the first principle of human intellectionthen we would be not men but angels in our manner of acquiring knowledgeFor this is the way that pure spirits think mdash by contemplating reality inthe mirror of their own angelic natures21 No amount of exploration intothe vast reservoirs of self however will ever acquaint us with the nature ofour environment External experience is the starting point of knowledge andwithout the information supplied by the senses we would be hopelessly crippledin mind Of course it is foolish to neglect what transpires within the field ofour intellectual consciousness yet it is the empirical principle which explainsthe beginning of human cognition At the same time we can never subscribe tothe theory that our certitude of first principles has merely the value of senseknowledge The fact is sensory data represent nothing more than the firststep and material cause or as Aquinas puts it more exactly ldquomatter for thecauserdquo of our rational accomplishments22

Finally the degrees of knowledge which Thomas describes with so muchprecision can mean but one thing in his mind

that philosophy is a hierarchical science whose departments are markedoff by very clear-cut formal distinctions Aristotle is perhaps not quite soexplicit on the point yet there can be little doubt that he held identical viewsregarding the tripartite division of philosophy23 To deny the existence andlegitimacy of these formal distinctions is to endanger the whole structure ofour knowledge This is the sin of pure empiricism which fails to discern anydifference between mobile and immobile being as separate objects of cognitionThis is also the main objection to pure idealism which abolishes all line ofdemarcation between the world of mind and the world of reality Confusionsof this sort that blot out the proper distinctions of sensible and intelligiblebeing automatically remove the foundation stones upon which the edifice ofhuman wisdom is built

V

The Aristotelian order which Aquinas handed down to his followers was ob-served quite faithfully until the 18th century But with the advent of Chris-tian von Wolff a new arrangement began to prevail For the sake of historicalcontinuity it must be remembered that Wolff was a disciple of Leibnitz and

21Summa Theol I q 56 a 122The total and adequate cause of human knowledge as explained by Aquinas includes

(a) intellect functioning as chief agent and (b) phantasm or sensory datum acting in therole of secondary and instrumental cause Cf Summa Theol I q 84 a 6 q 85 a 6 replyto obj 3 and 4 Also the De Veritate quest 10 art 6 reply to obj 7 and 8

23Metaphysics book 6 chap 1


similarly imbued with strong mathematical propensities It was quite in linewith his tastes and early training then to favor an aprioristic methodologyin presenting the elements of his philosophical system By this contrivance hehoped to give a Scholastic turn to the mathematical doctrines of his masterand to provide himself at the same time with the weapons that would de-stroy both empiricism and Spinozan To rid his name once and for all of eventhe suspicion of empirical heresy therefore he places general metaphysics orontology immediately after logic The whole content of his system is thus con-ceived in purely synthetic fashion and grounded on two aprioristic elementsthe principle of sufficient reason and the principle of identity On the otherhand by employing the very technique that Spinoza himself used he pro-posed to meet the Jewish philosopher on his own grounds where with toolsof a strictly Spinozan device a priori et more geometrico he was confident ofgaining an ultimate victory over the champion of Infinite Modes After ontol-ogy Wolff expounded in order his psychology cosmology and rational theologyall of which by a single blow became special sorts of metaphysics On thesurface it appeared to be a very convenient way of teaching philosophy andthe student must have rejoiced in the triumph of ingenuousness which madethe Aristotelian philosophy of nature merely an application of the principlesof ontology But the lure of simplification which is at the bottom of such in-clusiveness was only a makeshift expedient that failed to take account of thenatural modes of apprehending reality Furthermore the philosophy of naturein the Wolffian categories could no longer be considered as a science distinctby its formal object from metaphysics mdash which was the way that Aristotleand Aquinas regarded it24

Wolffrsquos ideas met with scarcely any opposition in the German schools untilKant made his appearance In his early years the sage of Konigsberg wasan ardent disciple of the Wolffian school but his allegiance did not survivethe test of maturity As is well known some of the sharpest criticism in theKritik der Reinen Vernunft is directed against the philosophy of Wolff Theinteresting thing for us here is the fact that despite his repudiation of whathe calls the ldquotraditional metaphysicsrdquo Kant still retained the outlines of theWolffian order in his own transcendental dialectics Unfortunately many ofthe schoolmen of the period also were intrigued by the simplicity of Wolffrsquosnew division the influence of which remained so deep and persistent that even

24The Wolifian classification of knowledge is guilty of even more serious faults than thoseindicated in the text We might summarize all these faults under three main headings (a)a failure to make the proper distinctions between the philosophic sciences (b) a failure todo the same thing for the natural sciences (and by natural sciences we mean such disciplinesas physics chemistry geology biology and so forth which use investigative methods ofresearch and base their observations on special experience) (c) a failure to differentiatecorrectly philosophic knowledge as such from scientific knowledge as such (and again byscientific knowledge we mean knowledge of the investigative sort which employs instrumentsof precision or clinical research and is founded upon special experience)


today not a few of the followers of Aquinas are found presenting the subjectmatter of philosophy in a purely deductive manner beginning with logic andpassing on immediately to the consideration of being as such as an object ofthe highest degree of abstraction As if this were not a sufficiently confusingreversal of the natural order of invention some would insist that epistemologyis a part of logic mdash when Aquinas would certainly have made it a metaphysicsof intelligence The very fact that it is a critical science whose aim is toestablish the validity of human knowledge is sufficient reason from Aquinasrsquospoint of view for fixing its place on a metaphysical level And we allege theAngelic Doctorrsquos clear statement to the effect that ldquoin philosophy the lowerdisciplines neither seek to prove their principles nor argue with those who denythem This task is reserved to a higher science indeed to the highest of allsciences metaphysicsrdquo25 Again (and this is a point Aquinas would be sure toemphasize) epistemology is a science of the real since its function is to defendthe actual value of human intelligence in its appraisements of the meaning ofobjective existence Logic on the contrary is a science of entia rationis or ofconstructions of the reasoning faculty and must be formally distinct thereforefrom epistemology as such The identification of the two as Thomas couldhave predicted was bound to lead to idealistic errors such as those into whichKant and Hegel and their followers fell

VI

Difficulties are encountered in the Peripatetic order of course but they can besettled with much more ease than in a system like Wolffrsquos One may objectfor instance that the truths of natural philosophy depend on metaphysics andthat we must be sure of the validity of our first principles before we can passfrom sensible to intelligible reality This argument would be legitimate if thesciences that constitute the philosophy of nature were strictly subordinate tometaphysics in the manner for example that the science of optics dependsupon geometrical knowledge But the situation is not the same at all Forwhile optics may have no principles that are properly its own the philosophy ofnature does possess such autonomous concepts which form the remote meta-physical substratum upon which it operates These concepts however are ofthe sort that require no immediate proving To illustrate physical movementis based on the idea that every change postulates a subject of change thatan effect must have an adequate cause that whatever is moved is moved bysomething else Axioms such as these are matters of public experience andneed not be established in their universal context before the philosophy ofnature is begun Indeed their transcendental nature would not be graspedin any case by novices in the philosophic disciplines At this stage Aquinas

25Summa Theol I q 1 a 8


would merely hint at their final resolution reserving to metaphysics the taskof explaining their ultimate significance both in se and in their relation tochange of every kind mdash even to the operations of separated substances and ofGod There is no doubt that in Thomasrsquos mind metaphysics precedes physicsin order of dignity but we are speaking here of the priority of invention not ofexcellence and from this point of view the precedence is reversed To developa philosophy of nature therefore all that is necessary as Garrigou-Lagrangesays is an ldquoimplicit metaphysics of common senserdquo which is ontology in itsrudimentary stages On this the lowest level of abstraction a partial andindistinct acquaintance with the laws of being is enough to carry us throughLater on with a higher degree of knowledge we can face these laws in all theirsupreme implications26

It is almost unnecessary to add that the order of invention in Aquinasrsquosphilosophy is also the order of teaching In a famous passage from the DeVeritate the Angelic Doctor tells us that art and nature both operate by thesame methodic laws mdash and he is speaking in particular of the art of peda-gogy27 Now the natural way of learning philosophy is by the processes ofanalysis and synthesis beginning with the motions of matter and ascendingstep by step in the scale of generalized knowledge The goal of this inventivetechnique is synthesis and our arrival there is simultaneous with the emer-gence of some metaphysical principle which explains the physical movementswith which we started at the same time that it furnishes clues to a deeperunderstanding of all sensible reality28 Aquinas sums it up beautifully whenhe says ldquoThrough our knowledge of temporal things we advance by way ofinvention to a knowledge of eternal things whence by way of judgment wepass back again to temporal things re-evaluating them in the light of eternalprinciplesrdquo29

Suppose on the other hand that we place ontology immediately after logicas Wolff did at once the unsuspecting mind of the student is exposed to thedanger of overlooking or missing completely the deep importance of meta-physics This is especially true with reference to the meaning of potency andact the pivotal distinction around which the whole structure of Aristotelianand Thomistic philosophy revolves By forcing its birth prematurely in hisconsciousness we are almost certain to distort his perspective of the Stagiritersquosmost profound antithesis How much better for him to approach it throughthe hylomorphic concept of matter and form the cosmological significance ofmotion and the quantitative continuum the mind-body relationship and thespecification of the faculties by objects Indeed to present it in any other

26Garrigou-Lngrange P R ldquoDans quel ordre proposer les sciences philosophiquesrdquo RevueThomiste 1924 nouvelle serie p 50

27Quest 11 art i28Cf Garrigou-Lagrange P R De Methodo Sancti Thomae Thomae ax Schola typo-

graphica ldquoPio Xrdquo 192829Summa Theol I q 79 a 9


fashion is to leave his immature intellect open to altogether wrong sorts ofimpressions mdash whither that it dropped meteor-like out of space or that it ismerely a pseudo-philosophic transcript of popular modes of speech

The effects of all the loose currents of apriorism which were set in motionin the 18th century are still with us and it is not an unusual sight to see thephilosophy of Aristotle and Aquinas displayed to the modern world in gar-ments of a definite Spinozan or Wolffian cut To be sure the habit does notmake the philosopher any more than it makes the monk nevertheless raimentof this style must ill fit one who is accustomed to moving in the deeply expe-riential atmosphere of Peripatetic thought Doubtless it is easy to rememberthe divisions of the philosophic sciences by a mnemonic term like ldquolocaterdquojust as it is easy to think of the whole field of philosophy as conterminous withldquometaphysicsrdquo But simplifications of this sort are dangerous especially whenthey result either in a false purview of reality or in an inversion of the naturalmodes of investigating it These are the tendencies against which great school-men like Garrigou-Lagrange and Maritain are constantly warning us and withgood reason since the basic complexities of philosophic thought correspond-ing to the physical mathematical and metaphysical levels of abstraction wouldseem to be irreducible At any rate it is a rather vain hardihood that wouldattempt by Wolffian categories or any other instruments of purely pedagogi-cal convenience to make them more simple than Aristotle and Aquinas foundthem


Aquinas have left us some very definite criteria for establishing the positionand sequence of the several parts of philosophy and it is this ground plan of aPeripateticrsquos education as Aquinas conceived it that we wish to discuss here

II

The principle of management for bringing the philosophic disciplines intoproper array is the abstractive process By this tool Aquinas shows how thehuman mind expands its knowledge of the different strata of reality and howit fixes the gradients of its ascent from physical observation to the highestconcepts of metaphysics Abstraction is of two sorts the kind that dissociatesthings that are naturally found together and the kind that enables us to ap-prehend simply and absolutely the nature or essence of things For examplewe can study the coloring of a fruit without reference to its other propertiesor we can concentrate on the notion of fruit itself without reference to theconcrete characters that make it this or that particular fruit In the first in-stance we have a sample of what the modern psychologist calls abstractionwhich in reality is nothing more than a form of attention bringing the ob-server into focus with a given fact at the same time that it shuts out otherimpressions Thus we examine the coloring of the fruit and disregard its shapesurface texture odor and so forth In the second instance we are dealing withwhat is called ideogenetic abstraction where a universal concept is derivedfrom the concrete experience of sense or where intellect grasps reality withoutthe phenomenal garb which clothes it It is by means of this second type ofabstraction that the mind of man is able to stratify reality1lowast

The degrees of knowledge depend upon the relative depth or penetrationof the abstractive act Now Aquinas always believes in beginning at thebottom of the ladder and so he starts with matter not only because it isthe lowliest kind of existence but also and more especially because it is thefirst thing of which we are sensorily conscious In fact the intuitions of senseare at the basis of all our ideational achievements But matter has differentconnotations for the abstractive process and it is important that we understandthem The initial distinction laid down by Aquinas is between sensible matterwhich is subject to qualitative determinations and intelligible matter whichis subject to quantity The qualities of an object lie on its perimeter so tospeak its quantity on the other hand is more deeply imbedded in the verysubstance of the thing The former therefore appeal directly to the sensesbut the latter is really known only to the intellect Furthermore each kind

1Summa Theol I q 85 a 1 reply to obj 1 Cf also the commentaries of Cajetan onthis article The distinction to which Aquinas here refers is discussed by modern schoolmenin terms of total and formal abstraction

lowast[Note Some of the text in the footnotes was garbled during digitization and may beincorrect]






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Brennan - The Mansions of Thomistic Philosophy

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Transcript of Brennan - The Mansions of Thomistic Philosophy